In a vehicle, wires and connectors are the biggest source of warranty repairs. During the manufacture of a vehicle, the wire harness cost is a significant portion of the total manufacturing cost. Many, if not most, of these wires and connectors are associated with switches. Wireless switches based on RFID technology have been proposed by the inventor of this invention in, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,103,460. Such RFID technology suffers from the limited range of passive RFID devices requiring interrogator antennas to be close to the switch, or expensive interrogators to be used. This complicates the system and removes many of the advantages of the wireless technology. RFID interrogators have now been developed with a range of up to 20 feet; however, they are expensive. What is needed therefore is a method of providing energy to passive RFID devices which can be used as switches. The invention disclosed herein uses a transmitter located in the vehicle seat to provide the energy to power various RFID switches with that energy being transmitted through the body of the vehicle occupant.
Technical papers and other published documents that are particularly relevant to the inventions described herein include:
1. J. Smith, T. White, C. Dodge, J. Paradiso, N. Gershenfeld, D. Allport “Electric Field Sensing for Graphical Interfaces”. 1998, IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl.
2. “Location Privacy And Wireless Body Area Networks”, The Physics asXiv Blog, MIT Technology Review, Mar. 23, 2011.
3. J. A. Paradiso, N. Gershenfeld, “Musical Applications of Electric Field Sensing”, Computer Music Journal 1997.
4. Kate Greene, “Talking to the Wall”, MIT Technology Review May 3, 2011.
U.S. patents that are particularly relevant to inventions described herein include the following in addition to those referenced in the text:
5. U.S. Pat. No. 6,684,973, entitled “Occupant detecting apparatus”;
6. U.S. Pat. No. 6,816,077, entitled “Multiple sensor vehicle occupant detection”; and
7. U.S. Pat. No. 6,960,841, entitled “Passenger detection system and detection method”.
Possible definitions of terms used in the application are set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,663,502 and 7,889,096, both of which are incorporated by reference herein.